Woodworking projects, his own set of tools, maybe a small workbench in garage

Dog training…first, watch The Dog Whisperer videos with Cesar Milan, plus somewhere is a monastery that specializes in training dogs – would be an interesting adjunct, and somewhere hardened prisoners are being brought back to humanity by raising dogs…must research this

Plan an imaginary trip across the country by rail, trail, bike, hike, air, car…map to mark up, write off for tourist info from states, figure out budget, gas mileage, etc..

Non-electric push mower – get to work!

Work: move this pile of woodchips over there using shovel and wheelbarrow; scrub the floor with this brush; whitewash this fence, Tom! (Tom Sawyer can be a difficult read, with the dialect indicated phonetically…might be better as a read aloud…a good one for boys); tape off and help paint an actual room (start with the garage!)

Dissection! All critters and equipment easily available from science supply places…yukky, and so, awesome!

Habitat for Humanity project with Dad

Offer help weeding, harvesting, helping around a working farm/garden

Canoe trip with Dad, or guided rapids tour – water parks just aren’t the same!

Bike riding with Dad along one of the longer rails-to-trails routes, with packed-in food and water, maybe camping along the way

We all loved the K-nex Bridge Building set…great teaching material about various kinds of bridge construction

David Macaulay books, especially The Way Things Work and Building Big (BB great with the bridge building, above)

Rocket stuff…tons of kits and books available – and do watch the movie October Sky, and maybe the movie Apollo 13

Models, model trains if grandpa has a barn or somewhere a space can be dedicated

New flower beds….lay out with rope or garden hose, then dig up, amend, plant…install borders

Get a simple bookcase from IKEA and ask him to follow the instructions and let you know when it’s done….then leave him alone to deal with it…inexpensive, might be handy somewhere

Remember that boys tend to grow ‘in tension,’ I’ve noticed 2 years physical/2 years mental…and when in one phase, the other suffers until they are more fully integrated.

Work on a life timeline together so he can see that you intend to release him into the world, that you fully believe he’ll be able to drive himself around (in 6 years…brace yourself!!!), could perhaps drive a tractor at Grandpa’s even earlier (best possible training for driving), could take a friend all around a town like Lawrence on the bus at 12, needs a class in car repair at about 15, might start his own collection of home repair tools at 13, will need to take the ACT at 16 or 17, might go ahead and take some classes he finds interesting at JCCC at 15 or 16, could sign up for the entire Adobe suite to teach himself for $20 a month if interested at around 14, would cook the family dinner once a week at 14, would take on responsibility for all the mowing at 14 and be able to offer mowing for money in the neighborhood at 15, should be doing his own laundry at 12, might get on a plane by himself for a visit to somebody at 13, could be at the next world youth day in 2020, etc…, etc…, etc… . Boys need to see that mom is excited about their growing up even though it means growing away…otherwise, they may break with mom by being awful and having her kick ‘em out!

Camera – equipment, buttons to push, creative, online gallery – professional photographer hands his kid an expensive digital camera at 5 years old: I took his advice and was so glad!

And, one of my favorites: go to the zoo (best: Omaha) and let him loose with a map, a camera, a watch, and a backpack of food or whatever he might need (and, maybe, a phone that would just be for emergency and practice answering when you call to check in, or calling you at specific times). Let the leash be short at first – see you in an hour right here, and then longer with practice…see you for a picnic lunch in three hours…can’t wait to see your day in photos, stay on main paths …maybe even, here’s some money in case you want to get something at the food place….the zoo is a great place for this!!! Much better contained than a city, or mall. I would feel entirely safe allowing your ten-year-old to do this, and it would be great training in “more freedom comes, the more confident I am you can follow directions and stay within the limits I’ve set”.

The movie It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World; the movie Glory (never understood why it was rated R – violence, yes, not much cussing, no women or sexuality or nudity…less violent that Iron Man and the like…about the first black regiment in the Civil War – one beautiful scene among men just before battle)

Books on my list of favs for 8-12 year old boys (some have sequels, not listed, and many of these authors have other good books):

What actually is a ‘living book,’ and what makes them live? Living books are vital, interest-catching, windows into worlds. You can hear the author’s passion and his voice. For the Kansas Catholic Homeschooling Conference, I dug deeper into Charlotte Mason’s idea that living books are essential to authentic education. We found some surprising new ways to animate our home schools, and moved past book lists to discover more living books. I thoroughly enjoyed sharing favorites from my lifetime of reading and long home schooling experience.

It’s so important to realize that good reading stimulates prayer, conversation and creativity. We don’t just ‘read stories,’ but we ‘read life’ through books, so they really must be living books, as food must be living food. I hope that a whole Catholic revival will spring up from the roots homeschooling is sending down into such good soil. The liberal arts always have their end in the person of the learner, and so living books are critically important not just as ends in themselves, but because of their contribution to the cultivation of human personhood and freedom.

I love Dorothy Sayers’ book The Mind of the Maker, and enjoy taking people through it to share her insights into the creative mind of God. She and I are both struck by the strange truth that, though God is (above all things?) a Creator, and we are made in His image, there is not much attention paid to developing an understanding of what ‘being a creator’ means.

It seems extra-spiritual, perhaps, but isn’t this right to the point? If we care what it means to be a good father, a wise ruler, a truthful judge (because these metaphors help us understand God and our own roles in life), but we care nothing about learning to be a creator, a storyteller, a dramatist, a musician, a poet, an artist of any kind, what does that say about our ‘spirituality’??

Yet rarely do I see Christians taking a drawing class, for instance, because they assume there is something huge to learn there about God and His ways; about themselves and their ways. But there is! When you realize it is the whole person who sees and not just the eyes or brain, you begin to realize how much more there is to see than you have understood.

When you try to act, but cannot release yourself to allow the giving of the character to a waiting audience, you find out something about your self-consciousness, and understand more deeply what the Incarnation cost Christ. When you think you have sound (even great) ideas, but never put them to the test of struggling to articulate them, opening them to scrutiny and judgment and comparison, you are missing something about who you are and what virtue is.

Well, I could go on and on, and wouldn’t have to if everyone would just get on board and read books like this! Being a creator, an artist, a maker of form, is a path of spiritual growth, if you understand the potential and the limits of this metaphor.

Blogging About My Talks

In a discussion of my poem by this title, we look at the pain a woman may feel upon being loved by Christ. It is sometimes a very difficult thing to be loved, and to receive love. Many women have related to my example of a woman who fights that love as though her life […]

A mom is the caretaker of a huge, wonderful, potentially beautiful, critically important place! She, herself, this actual, unique person, is the single most important ‘environment’ in the lives of her children. Like Mary, like the Church, she is an atmosphere. She is an atmosphere of affection. This is not just warm, fuzzy feelings, but […]

I enjoy sharing some of G.K. Chesterton’s thoughts on art (did you know he was trained as an artist?) – the whiteness of chalk, the value of doing things badly, the importance of framing, whether poetry should rhyme, learning to bear the tension of paradox, etc…. So many people know other facets of his thought, […]

Gosh, I enjoy giving papers at C.S. Lewis Conferences! But it’s expensive. Most of those who do it have, it seems, college department budgets paying their expenses. For an amateur Lewis ‘scholar,’ it’s hard to get there from here. I’ve been lucky to have a C.S. Lewis studies class nearby so as to become a […]

Women raising children stand in a very powerful place as the mediator of reality. We are great at being womb-and-placentas for our babies. We do fairly well at providing a home life that expands their contact with the wider world. We must also be, like a healthy cell wall, a semi-permeable boundary controlling incoming intellectual, […]

This is my most-requested audio – about how we can educate our children well, despite our own inadequacies. The Problem – We must get kids from where they are, to where they need to be; from ‘uneducated’ to ‘educated’. Given the poverty of our own education, we feel asked to do the impossible: build a […]

Click here or on the image above for the whole series. …it is difficult for poets to remain acceptable or contented party men; they ask too many questions. Dorothy Sayers, in the Introduction to her translation of Dante’s Purgatorio I just feel it would be a shame to let all these questions just disappear. I […]

FREE Parent Education Opportunity for Homeschoolers!! I’m getting ready for the 2017 Conference: Homeschooling to Rock the World and The Intellectual Life. This offer I made for you last year still stands! I am available to give FREE Parent Education presentations for small groups. Get the pdf here. (Please just contact me if you’re interested […]